Summary

A renowned expert on Chinese history turns his considerable talent and experience to the life of China's greatest modern leader--the enigmatic, mythologized, often maligned, and still-revered architect of Chinese Communism and the modern Chinese state.

Author Notes

Jonathan D. Spence was born in Surrey, England on August 11, 1936. He received a B.A. in history from Clare College, Cambridge University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. As a historian specializing in Chinese history, he wrote several books including The Search for Modern China, The Death of Woman Wang, and The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. The Gate of Heavenly Peace won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award of the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters.

Booklist Review

This new entry in the Penguin Lives series assigns the prolific Spence, author of 11 books on Chinese history, to make sense of Mao in less than 200 pages. A great deal of serious academic work has been done on the Chinese leader since his death in 1976, but most nonprofessionals have not had access to this material. With U.S.-China relations currently subject to polarized political debate and with American attitudes toward Mao equally polarized during his lifetime, this reasoned assessment is welcome. To describe Mao's 80-plus years, Spence must provide a panoramic portrait of China in the twentieth century: from life on the farm where the future leader was born and, briefly, educated, through revolution and world war, political infighting within the Communist Party, and relationships with his several wives, children, and grandchildren. Because (unlike most Penguin Lives volumes) Spence's sources are not readily available to most readers, the author supplies 10 pages of chapter-by-chapter bibliographical notes. --Mary Carroll

Publisher's Weekly Review

In the latest of the concise Penguin Lives series, China historian Spence (The Gate of Heavenly Peace, etc.) blends historical facts with cultural analysis, creating a work that is fluid and informative despite its brevity. Portraying an intimate Mao (1893-1976), Spence leaves much of the political commentary to other historians, focusing instead on how a boy from the farm villages of Hunan rose to rule the most populous nation in the world. Spence gives readers a Mao who is smart but not wise, unexceptional in almost all qualities except his "inflexible will" and "ruthless self-confidence." He points out that, even at a young age, Mao's perception of governing foreshadowed much of how he eventually did rule: in an essay written about Lord Shang, a Qin dynasty minister, Mao argued that Shang's rule, considered by historians to be cruel, was just ("At the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it"). "I have come," writes Spence, "to think of the enigmatic arena in which Mao seemed most at home as being that of order's opposite, the world of misrule." The shortness of the form enablesÄor requiresÄSpence to accelerate the pace of Mao's life, thus adding drama to the sea change in Mao's character from nave idealist to cunning political infighter and center of a personality cult. The Mao who lingers on the last page is a somewhat diminished, Lear-like figure, estranged from his wife and ultimately unsure of whether his revolution had a future. When Henry Kissinger praised Mao's writings during their famous meeting, the chairman responded: "I think that, generally, people like me sound like a lot of big canons." (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

There is no better person to write a general, readable account of Mao than Spence, an acclaimed Chinese historian and author of several biographies (e.g., The Death of Woman Wang) that trace individuals' lives in order to present the broader context of history. Two major themes permeate this excellent new book. First, Spence argues that the hardships Mao endured during the Chinese civil war threw him into a time warp that he never transcended (rather like individuals who developed a "Depression mentality" after living through the Great Depression in America). Second, Spence emphasizes that although Mao projected positive, uplifting images to the masses, he personally was energized by terrorizing citizens. In contrast to Jin Qiu (The Culture of Power) and Li Zhisui (Mao's personal physician, who recently revealed details about Mao's sex life), Spence does not offer a thoroughgoing psychological analysis of the Chinese leader. Instead he challenges his readers to decide for themselves. For all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/99.]ÄPeggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.